London's great literary pubs

Tread in the steps of greatness

You can imagine them: Byron or Shelley in a big billowy shirt, quaffing gin by the pint as they recite incantations of love and loss to a crowded bar room...

No idea if that ever actually happened, but it's what we imagine anyway. Maybe we've been on the gin ourselves...

Some of London's most historic pubs have a rich literary heritage with past patrons who include the likes of Charles Dickens, Orson Welles, Dylan Thomas, Lenin and even... Madonna; well she did do that black and white book where she got her norks out.

So re-tread in their great steps, sup a pint and maybe jot down some prose of your own. Should probably keep your norks covered though.

AIL Says: Poet John Dryden was a regular back around the time when people still called it the Bucket of Blood – a name it was given due to all the bare-knuckle fights that would take place here. Dickens also liked top pop by for an ale or two.

AIL Says: Artists, writers and poets could regularly be found in the French House back in the post-war years. Dylan Thomas was known to have once left behind his hand-written manuscript of Under Milk Wood here in 1953. It was found and promptly sold. What goes around comes around.

AIL Says: Ernest Hemingway was a fan when he was in town (who would have thought he ever tore himself away from the mojitos of Palm Springs) and Graham Green also appreciated the Dove’s riverside spot in Hammersmith.

AIL Says: Apparently, the writer Anthony Burgess was in the Duke of York for a quiet drink with his wife on one occasion when he had an altercation with a criminal razor gang. What was said we don’t know but we can only imagine it inspired the ultra violence of A Clockwork Orange.

AIL Says: Oscar Wilde often frequented this famous journalist’s boozer. Dark, traditional and slightly dingy now, it was probably much the same back then. The poet Lionel Johnson is also said to have drunk here… and died, after falling off his stool.

AIL Says: Soho’s Dog and Duck has had an array of famous visitors over the years. Madonna was known to pop in when she was in town and going further back, it was also a favourite of John Constable and George Orwell.

AIL Says: The Wheatsheaf is the only pub on the list to have helped in the matchmaking of a famous literary figure. It was here that the great Dylan Thomas met his wife Catlin. If you’re looking for a first date venue and an opening conversation topic… you’re welcome.

AIL Says: Before WWII, The Crown in Clerkenwell was on one occasion a meeting point for two of Russia’s most famous political figures and theorists, Lenin and Stalin. We hope that they met here to discuss politics and ideology, but it was more likely that they came to drink.

AIL Says: The Lamb was Charles Dickens’s favourite pub and still remains right around the corner from the museum that bears his name. Still a lovely old pub, this one might even give you an idea of what drinking houses were like back in the Dickensian era when writers seemed to spend more time drinking than writing.